


Fourth Time's the Charm

by Ranowa



Series: The Thanos Problem [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Gen, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Resurrection, Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, and they get one, for ALL tagged characters :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 01:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19757983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranowa/pseuds/Ranowa
Summary: The portals open, and this time, Thor gets a piece of himself back through them.That one piece is enough to make the difference they need.





	Fourth Time's the Charm

**Author's Note:**

> We're in the Endgame, now. ...Endgame FIC! :D
> 
> More handwavey made up magic, Loki being a dramatic diva, Bruce being bewildered he's friends with the guy he once broke in half, and Thor just /begging/ his brother to PLS STOP SCARING THE LIFE OUT OF HIM. Onwards, to the fix-it! 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! :D
> 
> July 2019 edit: just grammar and housekeeping, don't mind me ^_^

Loki opened his eye to a blinding sun.

He blinked slowly, once.

Then, his mouth slipping slightly open, he blinked again.

What was happening?

What was this?

He breathed in, stilted and jerky, then blinked again, too shocked to so much as shy away from the sun. His eye hurt, and his head felt- jumbled. As if he'd passed out, a sudden blackout in his memories that tasted as if only a minute or two long, dropping him flat on his back, turning his thoughts slow and sticky, and yet, now-

Something wasn't right.

Injuries were gone. Last he remembered, he'd felt like he'd been stretched nearly all the way in two and hung out to dry, his seidr drained almost to nothing. His side aching, a hand broken, a stab wound in his thigh. But he breathed, and could feel they were all gone.

He breathed, and could feel nothing but _wrong._

Heart caught in his throat, Loki pushed upright.

He wasn't the only one.

The battlefield had transformed, in the stretch of sleep that had not been sleep and had not left him rested. The carnage and scent of warfare was gone. The violence, the destruction, all absent, while the soldiers that remained, were... like him. Some sitting up, looking about in befuddlement, rubbing their heads- there, not far away was Wanda, and a little beyond her was the Flora Colossus, searching about with wide eyes. A few were even on their feet, while still many others were still sprawled on the ground. As if whatever had knocked Loki out had been a battlefield-wide event, and they were all coming to together.

The people that were left, anyway.

Because almost nobody was.

The field was nearly devastatingly _empty._

His breath caught uneasily again, tight in his throat.

Where was Thanos?

_Where is Thor?_

Slowly, unsteadily, Loki worked his way up to his knees; when nothing gave way, he rose fully to his feet. He didn't quite dare call out. Somehow, couldn't bring himself to break the confused, suffocating silence, not aloud, but he reached out with his mind anyway. Searching at first for Thor, but then recoiled.

The energy signatures were wrong, too. Just- just _wrong._ If he'd been absent for a few minutes, then it made sense that the world around him would have changed a little, but _this-_ it was as different as night and day, as the moon and the sun. The Mind Stone's distinctive blazing beacon had been snuffed out; the waves left from Thor's destructive lightning style were conspicuously absent. The ripples from other magic users were gone- the energy of the earth itself was simply _different._ If he hadn't know better, he'd have surmised they'd all have been teleported off-world in the space that they'd been unconscious, but this was undeniably the _same_ battlefield.

But it wasn't right.

_Where is Thor?_

"Steve?" a voice called from behind him, and he halfway spun about, twisting with his breaths quickening in his chest. Behind him was the human soldier they called Bucky, gun held useless in slack hands as he turned about in confusion, one hand rubbing his head. "Steve, where'd you go?" He touched his earpiece, but by the look on his face, no one was speaking to him through that, either.

"Loki," Bucky said then, staring at him with dark eyes, and in them was something akin to fear. "Loki, what's happening? Where'd Steve-" He stopped, staring around at the desolation. "Where'd _everyone_ go?"

"Do you not feel it?" Loki challenged back. For once, too shaken to snap and insult. "We are not where we were before. Something is... not right. I think-" He reached hesitantly out again with his magic, searching as his seidr wavered in him like an unsteady gale. His magic, that just a few minutes ago, had been about to run dry, but now felt as full as ever.

"I think something very big just happened," was all he could say, and fell silent.

Behind Bucky, Wanda at last got to her feet, too. Looking small and pale, shaken to her core, the witchling drew closer, and this time Loki was shaken enough himself that he did not flinch away, even from the daughter of the Mind Stone. She could feel it too, he saw. She felt something was not right.

With a mechanical _whir,_ another joined: the winged and humanoid falcon landed heavy on Bucky's other side, taking a few rough steps to slow down, the sound of his suit the only one at all to break the silence. The two looked at each other, and the falcon shook his head, and Loki knew that Rogers hadn't been found by him, either.

Rogers was gone. Thanos was gone. Vision was gone. Thor was gone.

So many people were _gone._

Loki turned again, not yet reaching out to search for Thor. He couldn't force himself, couldn't corral his magic to do it when it was so afraid of what he would _not_ find. He felt other ripples, instead, energy waves without even trying, and they all saw it for themselves, then; hovercraft approaching from the city that didn't look like the Black Order's. Reinforcements? For a battle that was already- not won, not lost, but just _over?_

_What is going on?_

The small group congregated began to drift apart, searching for people who were not there, and Loki had no words with which to call them back. His eye darted anxiously over the field, still searching himself, because something was very, very _wrong_ but he could not find what.

When his gaze alighted on the first change that was a _presence_ of something rather than an abscence of it, Loki fell still.

There was a statue.

Right there, in the middle of the battlefield.

One that had definitely not been there before.

Loki's eye narrowed.

Carefully, he began to pick his way closer. Over the battlefield that was suddenly no longer littered with bodies, no wreckage or weapons or death in sight. No one else had drawn near, perhaps because many of the soldiers had made their distance a while back yet, trying to get away from the confrontation with Thanos. He was alone, then, the best that he could've hoped for, as he approached the new statute, and looked up.

It was a cold, featureless slab, constructed from vibranium most likely, stretching several meters higher even than Loki and anchored carefully into the ground. By the set of the grass around it, it had been there for _a while._ It looked to be a monument of some kind, but to who or for what- or how it had gotten there in the first place- he could not tell.

Drawing closer did not, in fact, reveal any answer.

It did, however, make a wave of trepidation sink straight down, deep into his heart.

It was a monument. A memorial, perhaps. An unerringly smooth, dark slab, gleaming there in the hot sun, its entire surface marked with small carvings. There was a title of some kind, the biggest of the writings and carved a little below Loki's eye level, written in Xhosa, which he could not read, but some of the smaller carvings, he recognized as English. Many others seemed be in Xhosa again, and still there were other languages, some that he could make a hazard of a guess at, others not. All over the entire stone from top to bottom.

He didn't have to read any of them, to know what they were.

Names.

The fear wormed even deeper, settling down in his stomach as a parasitic worm.

"Bucky?" he called back. His voice tried to waver, and swallowing the tremor in his throat felt like forcing down a mountain.

The soldier was at his side almost immediately, again joined by the falcon, Wanda, Groot. The others kept a few steps away from the stone, clearly unsettled and confused by it, but Loki paid no mind to them. "Bucky," he said again, glancing at the White Wolf, then pointed towards the stone with a hand that he fought very hard to keep steady. "What does that say?"

Bucky narrowed his eyes. Clearly, just as reluctant to approach the stone as all the rest. To face the unsettling thing head on, and take confirmation in the palm of his hand of just what exactly it was that had gone _wrong._

But the silence was deafening, and now other survivors on the field were starting to take notice, too, turning towards them and starting to draw near. Soon, they would no longer be alone.

Apparently, it seemed to take no further prompting than that to approach the stone, and read.

"For the fallen," he read quietly. "We honor your sacrifice, and your memory. Battle of Wakanda... 2018."

There was a chilling silence.

From behind them, the falcon was the first to speak. "What is this? What's going on?" His voice etched a degree higher, strain cracking underneath it, and Loki pulled away from a flinch of Wanda's magic. "What- what does that mean?!"

"Wait," Bucky said suddenly, dropping down to one knee. "There's more," and he pointed.

Loki followed his gaze downwards to the bottom of the monument. He was right. There was more. A plaque carefully arranged against the ground, vibranium as well, untouched by the elements, carved similarly to the monument itself and yet, slightly different. Three different lines of writing, three different languages, and Bucky already was reading aloud the one in Xhosa. "We're sorry," he said, following it with a finger. "It's signed with a panther. Wakanda. Then under that- English, this one- just 'Forgive us'. It's signed with... an A."

"Avengers," the falcon said suddenly. His voice was too loud, almost, but if Loki covered his ears it would only make the pounding of his heart that much louder. "The Avengers."

The sinking feeling in his chest got even worse..

Bucky brushed a hand over the plaque carefully, his fingers still trailing along the messages. "There's another one," he said, glancing back at them. "I don't know the language, though... I've never seen letters like it before."

"Well, I think we can guess at what it says, anyway," the falcon muttered, and Bucky gave a grim sigh, turning back to the monument.

Loki, however, did not need to guess.

Bucky was correct. There was a third carving, underneath the Xhosa and the English ones. It was not in letters that he would have ever seen before, because they were not letters of Midgard.

It was ancient Norse.

 _I'm sorry,_ it said.

It was unsigned.

That was all the signature that he needed.

"What is going on here?" Wanda asked finally, her voice wavering. "This- everyone's gone, and this memorial, it looks- but we were only gone a moment! Vision, the scepter, they're all gone!"

"Steve, too- he was right behind me, I remember it, but then-"

"I am Groot? I am Groot?"

The words passed over him senselessly, drifting to be muffled under the building roar in his head. Something Wanda had said caught in him, heart racing, and in something approaching a horrified daze, Loki turned around to look.

The magic circle where he had trapped Thanos had utterly destroyed the ground around them. Wanda's magic had scorched the grass to a burnt crisp, a ragged burn mark on the field perhaps twice the size as Loki was tall. He searched for it across the field, looking about for the distinctive rock he remembered kneeling against- and there it was.

The remains of the magic circle were utterly nonexistent.

Short grass swayed in the wind, same there as everywhere else over the entire rest of the field. There was even a flower or two, the same scattered Grewia flowers from all over. The only reason he found it at all was because of the rock- if not for it, there would've been nothing distinctive about it at all.

That was the last detail that he needed to see.

"Everyone," Loki said. Apprehension choked in his chest, rising up and pulled tight until he strangled on it, tugging him to step into the rising fervor behind him without looking back. He waited, for a breath, waiting to ensure that the confused and near panicked voices had stopped, that he was being listened to.

In the unerring quiet of the field, he said, "I think we were gone a lot longer than a few moments." 

* * *

When the portals started to open, and the heavens split the skies, Thor could do nothing but wait.

First came the soldiers of Wakanda. T'Challa, Okoye, Shuri, with an army at their backs and Falcon soaring overhead. Restored to life again, each one he'd seem crumble to dust, each one now remade and breathing as solidly as Thor himself.

It was the first true confirmation that they'd seen. The first proof that their plan had _worked,_ and that the lives stolen from them all had truly been finally stolen back.

He still didn't dare to breathe easier.

_Not until I see him._

Another portal opened, shimmering in the sky, and through it came the fighters lost on Titan. Dr. Strange, the Guardians, the boy the world called Spiderman but Tony called Peter. The Guardians who had left Rocket alone and silent, sometimes curling at the end of Thor's bed just to feel warm; Peter who had died in Tony's arms but stood up there on his own two feet, alive again.

Across the smoking battlefield, he saw Tony, still halfway collapsed and broken on the torn ground, start to smile as bright as the sun.

Steve's brother. Tony's boy. Rocket's family.

_Come home, brother..._

_Please._

_Please, come back to me._

A third portal scalded open, spinning outwards to yield another view of Wakandan sky, and out began to march another army. This one not of Wakandan soldiers, this one of Avengers and Guardians again, a man that he recognized as Steve's close friend and then Groot beside him. Then Wanda, alighting down beside him red hands and glowing eyes, every bit as a whole as all the rest. Soldiers behind them, ships over their heads, the anger and grief of an entire world at their backs.

And then, Loki stepped out beside Wanda.

Thor's breath caught.

His brother fell in line with the entire rest of the building army, standing at the front of Wanda and another team of Midgardian sorcerers to lead the way forward. Taller than them all and larger than life the very particular way that only his brother could be, leading the way with all the thrumming, barely contained energy of a wild cat, all dark armor and hair against pale skin and a bright eye that was _alive._

Alive.

His brother lived again.

This time, it felt as if the light and warmth of the very sun had burst inside his chest, and all the breath left his lungs in a single euphoric gasp.

They'd done it.

They'd really, really done it!

Loki did not see him, even as Thor hungrily drank in the sight of him, so desperately he could not stop. He could see, even across the growing battlefield and lights, as his brother searched about once, then twice, trying to hold still and calm but it was there underneath his pale face, a tense worry that made Thor's heart soar all over again. He was looking _for him._ But instincts and the experience of a thousand years of battle had trained them both well and his brother snapped back to attention a heartbeat after his failed search began, flipping his dagger once to grin like the grim and wild witches their mother had told them stories of when they were young.

A green ripple of light began to glow about his hand, and that was what Thor needed to see, to know that- at least for now- he was going to be okay.

He caught Stormbreaker in one hand, and with one last grin towards him, turned back to face Thanos.

_Welcome back, little brother._

* * *

Loki had not felt so exhilarated and alive since Before.

Before Ragnarok, before Midgard, before Thanos, before his fall. And then perhaps a century or several before back- turn the clock backwards to when he hadn't started to grasp just how _different_ he really was, just how treasured Thor was in a way he had never been, and the resentment had begun to fester. In the days when they had fought side by side, back to back, and nothing could've ever changed that.

They were perhaps the last time he could remember being truly happy. But now, seen only as if through a shroud, turned bitter and sour by all the lies he now knew-

Now, Loki no longer recognized the person that he remembered from those uncertain times. It certainly wasn't who he was now, and Loki had thought for a long time now that it had never really been _him_ at all. Playing equal to Thor when he never had been, always playing catch up, trying to foist himself in where he had not been wanted.

No, the person that he'd been, back then, had never been true after all.

Put like that, then, this was perhaps the first time in his entire life that he was able to stand there, true to himself, and fully alive with it and wanting to be there.

Which would make Thor look positively devastated, to say it to his face, but- oh, well.

It was exhilarating. He felt electric, ecstatic, _alive_ again in a way that felt almost manic, tearing through Chitauri with an easy brutality that made his head and limbs sing. Wakanda's battle had been desperate, a fragile last stand that he'd never dared to believe he'd survive, that _anyone_ would survive, that Thanos would not claim the universe for his own and watch it burn-

But Thanos had done those things.

He _had_ died.

And now, he was back.

He'd wasted his second chance. He'd squandered his third.

Loki knew, by every bolt of lightning that struck the battlefield and every last crash of Mjolnir in his ears, that he would _not_ let down his fourth.

He skidded down the nearest slope, leaving Wanda behind because she quite clearly did not need his help, the world around him crumbling by her chaos magic as the Chitauri fell. He could taste other magics in the air, Midgardian sorcerers with their careful, refined spells, and something about it felt too small for his liking so when he landed he did so with a willful explosion of emerald fire, and felt more alive than ever before.

Across the field, lightning struck again, and Loki grinned.

Loki cleared the smoke about him with a wave of his hand, grinning fiercely and already hungry for more. His dagger hissed clean with a second wave, and already set to dive into another fight, he swept to his left and forged ahead.

To find himself face to face with the Hulk.

Loki gulped.

"Puny god!" the monster cried, throwing a massive fist in the air.

Oh, dear.

"H- hello," he stammered. Voice a certainly humiliating squeak, heartbeat quickening. Already a teleportation spell spun around his fingers, no destination in mind aside from _not here._ The Hulk was battling Thanos' army: the Hulk had once fought him, as a member of Thanos' army. Ergo-

Ergo, he missed the Hulkbuster suit.

"Yeah, hello!" With a huge grin, the Hulk slammed his massive left fist out, all but pulverizing a charging Chitauri with the strongest punch to the face he had ever see, and Loki flinched. "Welcome back!"

"He...llo...?" Agape, Loki squinted closer at the monster, then recoiled. " _Dr. Banner?"_

"In the flesh- or somewhat, at least!" Shaking his fist out- the Hulk? Dr. Banner?- turned back around, and he did not seem at all interested in pummeling him into a fine powder, so, after a swallow, Loki joined him in frowning up at the sky. "Think you got anything up your sleeve to take out some of the big ones?"

"Leviathans," he corrected automatically, then frowned. Dr. Banner was right. The leviathans really were quite catastrophic, and while the Wakandans' airships were holding for now, they were badly outnumbered and already starting to go down. Without aid, soon the skies would entirely belong to Thanos.

Through something of a haze, he remembered the Battle of New York. Watching in something between relief and shock and horror as the first leviathan had crashed to the ground, brought there by the Hulk's fist, and the second, brought down by Stark carving it up from the inside out. A mere glance in the Hulk's direction suggested he might not be capable of quite the same feats of strength as back then, while Loki doubted he himself could manage the same firepower as Stark, but perhaps...

Loki grinned, again.

"Dr. Banner?" he asked, flexing his hands and his magic with them. "Wait for me."

Then, with a flurry of a shapeshifting spell, he took off.

He cycled from a falcon to a raven to an eagle, then settled on going all in for the dramatics and just shifted straight into his Asgardian form with a brand new pair of jet-black wings, soaring skyward between lightning bolts and gunfire to make straight for the nearest leviathan. Loki heard Dr. Banner give a victorious whoop back from the ground, which- all right, yes, it was rather _nice_ to get cheered on every once and while-

Which was why he was now grinning, as he dived straight into the leviathan's mouth.

The beast writhed around him, screeching and hurtling this way and that as he dragged down its insides with every last bit of power that he had. He might not have been Tony Stark, but he remained one of the last great sorcerers of Asgard, and this filthy, lacerated animal was nothing but beneath him as he carved straight out its tail to climb onto its body. His wings flared, flapping off blood, then flared again, catching him as he fell in free-fall against the length of the leviathan's back.

 _Watch this, Thor,_ he thought, and grinned.

The leviathan still stunned from being scarred inside out, Loki could take the reins as easily as if it were a saddled horse. He landed on its massive head, straddling it as best he could to hang on against the edge of a huge scale to bring its skull down by solid brute force, hammering downwards with the strongest spell he had. _"Coming back to you, Dr. Banner!"_ he called, and reared the leviathan straight back down for the Hulk.

The waiting punch was more than enough to finish the job.

Loki jumped the last few feet to the ground, landing hard in the wreckage of an airship to face Dr. Banner again, the earth-shaking crash from behind reverberating through his very bones to confirm a job well done. Messy, perhaps, ungraceful, and now he was dripping in black, disgusting blood, certainly not his cleanest kill ever but perhaps his largest one, and- job well done, all the same.

He shook himself out vigorously once, hair and wings, trying to rid himself of all the slime and muck. Looking distinguished while he did it, he was pretty sure was already out of the question. "That went well," he said smugly, wiping one soaked dagger off on the hem of his armor. "Want to try for another?"

Dr. Banner, already grinning himself, opened his mouth for what Loki could already hear was a yes.

Only for, right in plain view of them both, another leviathan to get cracked right in its massive head by the biggest bolt of lightning that he had ever seen.

It dropped straight down as a dead weight, smashing so hard into the ground it rumbled under his feet like an earthquake. Very resolutely dead.

Loki blinked.

Still just standing there. Shiny new wings flared, soaked in sludge, his entire front, face, and hair, still smeared in black blood, and panting with the effort of what had easily been his most time-consuming, difficult kill of the day.

His face warmed.

 _Show-off,_ he tried to say, could taste it on his tongue even as Dr. Banner gave another triumphant whoop, but somehow, what came out was, "Love you too, brother," muttered sourly under his breath, as he took off to the skies again.

It was easy enough to focus on the leviathans, after that. A rote, repetitive task, one that didn't strain his seidr and just because Thor was showing off did not mean there wasn't still more than enough to go around. He'd missed flying, even as slimy and disgusting as this flight was, he'd missed battling that didn't feel lost from the moment he'd drawn his blades, he'd missed-

He'd missed feeling alive.

Breathing and tasting excitement on it, and knowing that he wanted to still live to fight another day.

He brought down a second to Dr. Banner, then a third, steered straight into a massive portal by a team of four Midgardian sorcerers. Then he cut through still a fourth, dragged through its insides all the way and fighting its hide so hard his arms began to throb, and when he caught onto the scales outside Loki had to grab on just to let himself be carried, too out of breath to do anything more than that.

A dozen leviathans or more still persisted around him. The Black Order's ships outnumbered theirs ten to one, and to take only one of their command vessels out would take him an hour. The ground below crawled with wave after wave of Chitauri, and even from here he could feel the powers of Ebony Maw, Thanos' other dangerous children, overflowing over the battleground akin to an eruption of lava. The nearby ocean was flooding, a typhoon spelled upwards, tsunamis rolling in one after another that could drown their entire army.

 _Something's going to have to change,_ he realized numbly. There was a traitorous quiver of panic in his chest, a twisting of nerves in his stomach that he struggled to silence. The Midgardians, the Asgardians, the Ravagers, the- _Norns_ \- the wraths of near the _entire universe_ were doing well, against Thanos. Holding their own, but he could see that they grew weary. There were too many airships, too many leviathans, too much destruction capable by Thanos alone that none of them were strong enough to stop.

They couldn't hold this line forever.

And just as Loki realized this-

Something changed.

Namely:

He was falling.

Wait.

He was _falling?_

It took Loki a moment, the rush of hot wind from the leviathan's flight that had turned into the hot air of free-fall to hit his brain and make sense. And then a moment longer still, a quick gasp in his lungs, a jerk as he twisted in mid-air, scrabbling his hand at nothing, turning back- had his fingers slipped? Had he let go? What-

Loki blinked.

The scorched sky overhead was empty. Orange and red clouds, drifted through with hot smoke, just clear enough for him to glimpse the fading sun and the rising stars through the thick smog of battle.

And that was all he saw, because the leviathan was gone.

 _All of them,_ in fact.

The sky, barely a heartbeat before, littered with leviathans, was _empty._

Just like Wakanda had been.

After Thanos.

Loki's heart stopped.

A warm hand caught his, jerking his fall to a grating halt so sudden his brain rattled. "Lackey!" he heard, the world around him tilting sideways, grip on his hand tightening snugger and safe, and it took him a dumb second too long to blink back upwards, and find himself caught by the last Valkyrie. Bloodied and panting, yet by the ecstatic glow in her eyes, she was just as relieved to see him alive as he was to be alive at all. "Need a ride, Your Highness?!"

He choked once, all but overwhelmed. "What's going on?!" he shouted back over the wind. "Where'd the leviathans- where'd _everything_ \- go?!"

She merely shook her head, turning away so she could focus on their flight path. "Whatever it is, I'm only seeing it take out Thanos' crew. Think this time, it's on our side!"

Loki wasn't really sure what she meant by _this time,_ but let it slide without question, instead turning his own gaze back to the battle beneath them. She was right. There was not a member of Thanos' army in sight, and all signs of actual fighting seemed to have hurtled to an abrupt halt.

The massive battle that they had been on just this edge of losing, because there was just _too much_ charging against them...

Ended, in all but an instant.

There was only one thing that could hold that kind of power.

Loki's heart settled straight into his throat.

_No._

He closed his eyes, shutting out the turbulence rattling his world to tap into the energies around him instead, and the instant he looked it was _there_ , so massive it felt like being rocked by a tidal wave. The enormous aftershock of sheer energy vibrated in the air like hornets in his skull, hot and excited and nearly too much to bear, so violent his teeth ground together and his bones rattled. He could _still_ feel it, rippling as if it was ongoing, as if it would never stop, but Loki did not care what the wave was, and the moment he found the epicenter, blazing as white-hot as a dying star just underneath their feet, Loki spread his wings and let go.

From all that he'd seen in the battle here today, in his millennium of experience and centuries of research, only one person here today was strong enough to bear the full power of the infinity gauntlet.

Being strong enough to bear it, and strong enough to use it, did not mean strong enough to survive it.

_No._

_No, no, no._

Loki let himself fall, half soaring and half dropping against the thermals and smoke and ash-choked air. The breath strangled out of his lungs and panic tightened around his throat in a noose, roaring in his head that screeched into a fear so sick he couldn't think because all he knew was the crash of the screeching, overwhelming sense of horror.

All he could think was _no._

He could not be alive if Thor was dead.

He could not-

_Would not-_

_No, Thor, no, no, no, no-_

Loki circled the radiating wave of energy with a single-minded focus so intense it made his head hurt. He couldn't think but could see it, all the same; could see Thor dead, drained of all life by the stones, torn apart by a power even greater than the gods'. Bleeding, breathless, eyes empty and spirit _gone,_ and if he'd breathed he would've screamed. But he couldn't breathe, either, each attempt rasping off and cut too short in his throat, his seidr quivering in him like a struck child, and in the instant his feet finally touched solid ground it felt as if he was being crushed down and buried alive. Like he was dying in Svartalfheim again, pierced straight through, cracked open, and split in half, the breath robbed from his lungs and the world cratered to a stop around him, anything and everything, at so very, very long last, finally _over._

Except then, he'd accepted it. He'd borne it and smiled, because that had meant everything was _over,_ over at last, and Thor had been there, promising foolish things, crying foolish tears, yet now-

_Thor, where are you?!_

He turned once, heart in his throat. Turned back. No Thor. Where was he?! The epicenter was right _here,_ he could feel it even now, this was where the stones had been used. So where was Thor?! He could see the six stones, howling like an earsplitting hellbeast to his magic, sitting right there on not-Thor, so he whipped about again, nearly choking on it, and so frantic he felt his seidr overflow and erupt on his hands so hot it scalded.

 _Where_ was _Thor?!_

He turned about again. There, still, that group of Midgardians about the stones. No Thor. Where- _where-_

When it finally hit Loki, it did so with such beautiful violence that he staggered, stumbling to nearly drop to his knees. His head spun and his world spun with it.

It hadn't been Thor.

The Midgardian, collapsed with the stones even now, just meters away, had been the one to use them.

It had never been Thor at all.

One short, breathless laugh tore its way past chattering teeth. He pressed a hand to his hollow chest, each breath scraping in and out, and when his world titled again, this time Loki did not fight it as he let himself fall.

They were both alive.

They-

They were both-

Really, actually, undeniably, _this was real-_

He ducked his head between his knees, rocking once, then twice, then over and over again. At first he choked on a broken laugh, spitting against his knees and halfway to hysterical. Then, for long enough to be a lifetime and short enough to be but a single heartbeat, Loki just knelt there, and breathed.

_It's over._

_It's really, really over._

_It's over._

Slowly, the world around him filtered back in.

Voices, he realized absently. Looked up, wiping his eye on his knee. His heart still pounding, so loud he could feel it against his chest and so fast his hands still shook worse than they'd ever had in his life. The Midgardian man with the stones- Stark, he recognized, after a breath. The man of iron, self-titled avenger of Earth, Tony Stark.

Thor's friend.

He was dying. Loki could feel his life's energy dwindling, collapsing in on in itself like the heart of a dying star, and even without his magic he could see it with his own two eyes. The man was dying. The friends gathered about him could see it, too- weren't even trying to keep him alive. Perhaps they never had in the first place.

They were wise, not to.

There was nothing they could do.

Loki had always known himself self-centered, and always known himself selfish, and in the space of that moment, he did not care. He looked at Tony Stark, dying right there on the ground in a sacrifice that had saved all their lives, and all he cared was that Thor was alive.

He'd burn a lot more than one life, to have that be true.

Loki knelt there, still faintly rocking only to himself, to the panicked fluttering of his heart. As he watched, one of the gathered mortals, a man with dark skin and an iron man suit of his own, reached out once to touch Tony's hair. He was crying, Loki realized. Silent, unabashed, shattered tears. The woman knelt there was nodding to him, trembling, crying tears of her own. She said something, the words tiny and broken, then: _"You can rest now."_

Something in his throat tightened, contracted, and shattered.

 _It's all right,_ he remembered. Could hear it in his brother's voice, feel the hand cradling his neck, see it in his broken eyes. _Shh, shh. It's all right._

He remembered Thor looking at him like his entire world was ending.

Silence settled, inside and out. His seidr flared in his chest again, warm and comforting even as it spread to his fingers, crawling as if it wanted to be let out, whispering the words of an ancient spell, and-

And all he could see was the look on Thor's face, as he'd died.

One time, two times, three times.

Ah, Hel.

Loki flared his new wings, letting them spread and hiss, back shuddering as they retracted and shrunk down into scars that shrunk into nothing. His seidr warmed with them, swelling a little, growing as a pulsing light around his heart, and with steps as steady as iron, Loki approached the grieving huddle.

A simple wave of his hand was all it took, to force the others back. Another clench of his fist against their scattered cries, and they were kept there, forcibly locked out by the line of his spell. He heard them shouting, grief-stricken and shattered, heard weapons being fired and a boy's screams, and Loki let them do it, because there was no time.

He knelt down carefully, crossing his legs in the scarred dirt to look at the human before him. His body was already shutting down. There was no light in his eyes, hardly a breath in his chest, and the damage that the infinity stones had done was already massive and still spreading.

But it was not too late.

Loki spun a knife, dripping in Chitauri blood, and first, he went for the stones. They'd devoured enough of the metal suit that his left arm was bare, and with a surgical precision, Loki brought his knife back and hacked straight down and straight through the lower arm.

The shouting and screaming behind him reached an entirely new, utterly discordant level, and now there was a detached hand lying free next to him on the ground.

 _Pleasant,_ Loki thought, sighing.

As violent as it was, the motion had freed the stones, scattering the glowing, ravenous six down by their sides alongside half a newly amputated limb; it also freed Stark from their parasitic draw. The arm had been dead, anyway, eaten away already by a power that nearly none in the universe had the capability to reverse.

Worse than that, while the others trapped still outside his circle had screamed their protests, hurled their insults, thrown every weapon they had-

Stark had not responded.

Not reacted at all, to the violent hacking of his arm straight off.

He was only going to have the time to try this once.

"You ask a sacrifice, you receive a sacrifice," he recited. The ancient words, written by sorcerers much, much older than him, the spell resting on laws of the universe that had all been lost but not forgotten. Loki slashed his dagger once again, this time a shallow cut through the palm of his own hand, and pressed the bleeding wound to the injury he had just given Stark himself. "Hear me, Allfathers, and lend me strength. Hear me, Allmothers, and give us blessing. Take not from him what you may take from me, because our bloods have mingled and for this breath, we are as one."

Then he closed eyes, breathing in deep once to join hands, and gave his seidr over.

The infinity stones would always ask a sacrifice. They could be stabilized by conductors like the Tesseract, the gauntlet, modulating the energy required, but to hold the power of the universe in the palm of your hand would always come at a cost. Aesir were strong enough to pay that cost on their own two feet, and Jotnar, too, and others still, to recover their own lifeforce the way that only gods could.

Which meant all that was required, for Tony Stark to keep breathing, was for someone else to pay the cost for him.

Someone who had the ability, to force the infinity stones to take their price from someone other than the Midgardian already dying at their feet.

Someone strong enough to pay it, and live.

Someone, like-

Well. Loki.

That was the last coherent thought he had for a while.

It felt like he was being sucked into a black hole, which he would _very well know about,_ thank you very much, a great well dropped out beneath him to haul him downwards with a howling wind and screaming of magic. His insides being stretched, hauled into a dying Midgardian with such agonizing brutality it was all he could do but to hold on. The stones took his seidr and he willingly gave it, convulsing with every blow, gasping with each hit, each pull dropping him a thousand feet and he still fell as the stones still took.

It was agonizing, it was brilliant, it was torture, it was exhilarating, being the conduit to such awe-inspiring, massive _power;_ his vision whited out and the heat scalded in his lungs, burning him alive from the inside out. There was screaming- the Midgardians around him, Loki himself, he didn't know; couldn't hear over the volcanic roar in his head, the bloodcurdling shriek of his seidr as the stones took it overpowering everything else. He'd used the Space Stone before, the Mind Stone, held Reality in his hand, but _this-_ the demand incredible, it was so much greater than _anything_ he'd ever felt before, how had it not already shredded Tony Stark apart-?

It was too much. He couldn't see couldn't think couldn't breathe, there was a planet crushing his chest and his insides were being scoured inside out, he wasn't going to make it-

 _You're so close,_ he heard. Just barely, a soft whisper in his head as his mother guided his hands, the first time he'd made witchlight. Perhaps that was it, perhaps it was all in his head; or perhaps, caught in the thrall of the infinity stones and a little bit of him still lost in Valhalla after all, it was real, the feel of her hands guiding his about Stark's, _sweetheart, you're so close._

Then, with a fizzling _snap_ and a white-hot, agonizing _pop,_ it was over.

The pull stopped.

Loki gasped, still, knelt down and panted through gritted teeth. His nose bled and something warm and wet trickled from an ear, barely felt underneath the hot stretch of his seidr still shared between them. Every inch of him was thin and in pain and caught in a stasis that threatened to tear him apart. Stark, then, still did nothing at all. Still sagged against the wall where he had fallen and now so pale and still, his skin an almost translucent, hollow green that glowed like an ember from the inside, as still as the dead, but he breathed, and his heart beat, and that was all Loki could do for him.

It was over.

Gasping raggedly, finger by finger and inch by inch he fought the resistance like it was wet, thick mud, pulling back the hand that he had cut. His seidr glowed and thrashed even harder, a tenuous connection still pulsing between him and Stark, and he heard screaming, again, this time only from others on the outside. "Allmothers-" he gasped, wretched voice wrenched past gritted teeth, "h-hear me- Allfathers, bless me..." It felt like he was falling, still, down and further down, each motion fighting against a mountain as he painstakingly dragged his finger in the dirt, spelling out the sigil and words to end the spell. "The sacrifice is paid. If t-the universe be... satisfied... t-then with these words, let our hearts n-no longer beat... as one."

For one last heartbeat, the connection remained. Glowing between them bright like a star, and leaving him tugged into pieces so violently he didn't even have the strength which with to scream.

Then it shattered, and he was thrown backwards with all the force of a- of a-

Well, he thought distantly, head lolling as he crashed against the a heap of wreckage to be left sprawled in a panting, shuddering heap, well, with all the force of something that was rather like a Thor.

His head rang. His ears buzzed. His vision whited out a second time. Fatigue sucked him down like he was drowning, and this time, entirely content, Loki let it.

Somewhere past the haze, the suffocating buzz in his ears, someone came. Another, armored like Ironman, but this one a woman, fierce and blonde with eyes that blazed as hot as the fires around them. She faced him, arm raised up and the weapon in the palm of her hand already glowing with white-hot vengeance, and in a breath, somehow, she reminded him of Frigga.

Also, it'd be really unfortunate to have his fourth death be due to nothing more than a misunderstanding.

"He can still be saved," he croaked. Didn't quite have the wherewithal to gesture, so he just did it with his eyes, instead, staring back to where Stark had now been crowded around by others again. "H-he can still-. ...help him..."

She did not move. There was another flicker of rage in her eyes, wild, wicked rage, and Loki really probably should've said something, but everything still looked slightly green, it hurt to breathe, and his head spun so dizzy-

Ah, how he'd really like to lie down, now.

_"He- he's breathing! Mr. Stark? Mr. Stark! Can you hear me?!"_

_"Holy shit, Tony- Pepper! Pepper, help- we need medical over here! Someone, help us, now!"_

_"MR. STARK!"_

When Loki blinked open his eye again, Lady Iron Man was gone. So, too, were Stark, and the friends who had gathered around him- and so, too, were the infinity stones.

He wasn't sure whether to regret the lost opportunity, or be thankful the door had been firmly shut in his face and curse them as _good riddance._

But it hardly mattered, just now, because- because-

It really was over.

Loki's eye slid shut again, this time with a dazed, rather close to inebriated smile. For the first time in a near decade straight, he slid back and allowed himself to absolutely, breathlessly, numbly, fully relax.

_It's over._

Loki dozed, for a time. Not quite asleep, not quite awake. He felt warm and full at the same time as scraped empty and hollow, running on desperate fumes, but that was all right, because there was no longer anything left that he had to fight. He could breathe, again, and for a long while, that was all that mattered.

When the ground shuddered underneath him, a ringing metal _clang_ in his ears that resounded so deeply it made his bones ache, one that screeched _danger,_ he was still so dazed and content that the will to open his eye was beyond him.

For a little while, at least.

It really would be unfortunate if he wasted his fourth chance after all, just for an infuriatingly hard-earned and well-deserved cat nap.

He cracked his eye open.

His heart stuttered.

Thor had found him.

The world, already faintly tilting around him, hurtled a hard left, and everything screeched to a stop.

His raw insides squeezed unsteadily, twisted in his stomach over a wave of emotion too vehement to bear. Thor was alive. Thor was whole. Thor was years older, with long hair again and a softer body and a new weight in his eyes to age him a hundred years. Thor was standing right there, staring at him, just the two of them, and for a moment it felt like he was flying, again, but-

Oh, he did not look happy.

He didn't look- Norns, his face. He had never _seen_ Thor like that before. He stood there, dark and foreboding, his face stormy with the kind of silent, throbbing rage that was so characteristic of his brother, a cold-blooded, despairing rage that grew and grew until it snapped as lightning but in all their centuries Loki had never seen Thor look like _that._ And surprises when Thor was concerned tended to involve lightning and not end painlessly for him, so Loki found himself pressing just a little back against his refuge, unable to help the instinct to try and squirm away. "Th- Thor?" he rasped, pushing backwards again. Thor looked empty, shattered, broken, _furious_ all at once _,_ and Loki had neither the strength nor, truly, the desire, to outrun him.

Was this to be his fate, then, he thought madly; was his fourth chance promised to end with a bolt of lightning for some great wrong he did not even know he'd committed? "Thor," he said again, pushing halfway upright, "what-"

His brother's face twisted abruptly, rage scattered into devastation with nothing more than a rough gasp. He took one heavy step forward and stopped, wavering as a flag in the wind and mouth working desperately, but no sound came out. He looked like he'd just been stabbed through the chest with a rusted blade, and the blade was still there, shredding him apart from the inside out.

When it at last hit Loki, it did so like the charge of an eight-legged horse.

He hadn't been the only one to realize what must have happened, when Stark had snapped and brought Thanos down with it.

Loki had been so sure it had been Thor, at the time. Because he and Thor were the _only ones_ strong enough to bear it, and it had plainly not been himself, so of course it must have been Thor. But Thor, across the battlefield, had only known it was of course not himself, and thus-

Thor had come to the exact opposite conclusion.

And- and Thor had then come here, following the source of the infinity stones power, finding Stark gone, and him-

Slumped motionless against a pile of wreckage, bleeding from his face, and utterly still.

Oh.

_Oh._

"Thor-" he rushed to say, holding up his hands. Thor's face blanched again, probably at the still bleeding cut through his palm, and Loki rushed to stumble upright, unsteady on his feet but if he could just get that awful look off his _face._ "You oaf, really- you don't think I _died,_ did you? Really, you know me better than that-" And he tried to laugh, tried to give a careless smile, but it all came out unsteady and the look on Thor's face then was as if he'd just been stabbed all over again. Oh. No. Definitely wrong approach. No, try again, Thor looked like he was about to burst into tears- "I'm quite all right, Thor, honestly. Really, I was just resting my eyes- don't be such a _fool,_ brother-"

His unsteady steps brought him within reach of his brother and Loki reached out because it was the right thing to do, because it was what Thor would do. "I'm fine," he promised again, "See, look at me? I'm fine, just as always- Norns, Thor, you are _shaking,_ don't-" He wrapped his arms around Thor, first to try and just contain the devastation on his face in his arms, then found himself ducking his own head to hide it against his shoulder, to hide from it himself.

"Listen to me," he instructed, carefully lowering his unmoving, unresisting brother down. "I'm fine, so you- you must _stop,_ this- _foolishness-"_

Thor made a small, keening noise, high-pitched and broken like a small child's. He tilted his head back, the shaking in his limbs seeming to have transferred itself to Loki's, now, and for a moment that was all there was- Thor kneeling, breaths frozen and body still, and Loki clutching him and pathetically grateful just to hide his face in his shoulder.

Then Thor clutched him back, and something crucial and fragile in his own chest shattered.

Thor held him too tightly, fingers digging into his hair and back desperate enough to causes bruises and pain but the hurt meant he was still alive, both of them were, and it made him gasp with relief. Thor desperately kissed the top of his head, over and over again;"I thought you-" he choked, then made that horrible keening noise again. "Loki-"

 _I know,_ was all he could think. _I know, you fool._

_I thought it too._

His brother held him in silence for a moment longer, shattered somewhere between sobbing and shouting. "I have lost you too many times, Loki," he finally gasped, heat and the scene of ozone as Loki felt him press his face against his hair. "I have you watched you die again, and again, and _again,_ and- and I can do it no fourth time! Do you hear me, brother? I am _done_ watching you die!"

 _I'm not dying,_ he wanted to say, but somehow it was lost underneath Thor's rough and quavering sob.

For ten years, now, perhaps he _had_ been. Dying. Over and over, living in bursts and starts, hardly living at all. Always waiting for the next hammer to fall, and he'd never looked beyond himself until now to realize that Thor must've been living like that too, in a way. Thor heaving choked, heavy sobs of grief into his hair, Thor clutching him so desperately he was already bruising, the Mighty Thor _shaking..._

He couldn't deny it, this time.

He could not sneer at him _did you mourn,_ and pretend to himself he had not.

This time, Thor was mourning right here, right now, not even for what was but for what could have been.

Perhaps he had never stopped mourning, since he'd signed his name into that memorial five years ago.

Loki would have chided him for it, if his throat hadn't been abruptly too tight to speak.

Soon, they were both shaking; Thor with silent sobs and Loki for what he could only amount to exhaustion alone, because acknowledging the torment swirling in his stomach was too much to accept. Thor must have realized it, too; with something between a wet cough and a groan, he sunk them both to the ground. Carefully, gently, collapsing back against the same wreckage Loki had leaned against before, Thor now with his back to it and Loki shuddering in his arms. But somehow, while taking the weight off his legs helped Loki steady, it only made his brother worse. The hand in his hair shook convulsively, going from stroking to almost pulling, and Loki would've pushed him if he wasn't so hollow inside out.

Thor was terrified. His brother was scared out of his mind, and grabbing him so tightly it was almost as if Thor was afraid that he'd vanish if he let him go.

Like he already had, so many times before.

"I'm-" he whispered, muffled into almost nothing against his hot shoulder. There was so many things that he should've said, could've said, but somehow all he could find to come out was, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Thor was quiet for a moment, only shivering, chest heaving with silent gasps. Then, with a vehement shake of his head, another press of his lips to his hair, he said, "No. No, I am. I-" He started to pull back, just barely far enough that they could again look each other in the eye. But then his face contorted again, like even that was too much, and his brother slumped to press their foreheads together with tears in his eyes and a hand on his face. _"I_ am sorry, Loki. I'm sorry for how things have been, between us. I am sorry I did not protect you, that I did not listen to you, that I did not speak on your behalf when I should have. I am sorry for not being a better brother. I-"

"Thor- Thor, _what-?_ "

"-I know what happened with Thanos, and even if you can never speak of it to me I want you to know that I love you, and I am proud of you, and that you should be proud of yourself for enduring as you did-"

 _What._ If ever there had been sentiment so embarrassingly foolish- and not to mention _out of nowhere-_ _"Thor,"_ Loki said again, his face hot. "What are you _doing?"_

But he kept babbling, words that came too quick and sure to be anything but rehearsed, but by the tears in his eyes and the crack in his voice every last one of them sincere. "I am proud of you for so many things and admire you for so many things and have missed you in so many ways. I am sorry for all that I have done wrong, for all that I did not give you a chance to speak before I passed judgment. I am sorry you could not stand at Mother's funeral by my side, I am sorry for how gravely Father wronged you, I am sorry that you had to suffer alone, I-"

"Thor, if you do not stop-"

"-but I swear I will endeavor to be better. I will be a better brother to you, Loki. I'll be everything I should have always been, I will make all this right, if-" He sobbed once again, hand fisting in anguish against his back. "if- you will only give me one m-more chance, brother-"

 _"Thor,"_ Loki sighed, face well and truly burning, now. And because his brother was _still_ not stopping, he wormed a hand out from the crushing embrace and clapped it firmly over Thor's mouth.

Thor blinked several times, tears still running down his face, now hot trails of water that mingled with blood to meet the edge of his hand. He still stared as if shattered, inside, as if something had come loose, perhaps a very long time ago, and not yet been fixed right, but he'd stopped talking, at least, stopping the- this prostration of a confessional, this begging for forgiveness, this litany of apology-

Loki's ears rang, something warm knocked loose in his chest, too, and he had to swallow very hard before he could bring his hand back down.

Thor was quiet for a few moments, then sniffed, in a very undignified sort of way. "I've had five years to think on all that I would say to you, if I could just get the chance," he said, his voice still thick. "I memorized the speech a long time ago, brother."

"...oh."

He- really did not know what to say to that, actually.

Loki swallowed after a beat, glancing away from the painfully sincere look on Thor's face that made it look as if he was about to start up again, any second now. "And does the speech continue?"

"Ah- yes, actually." Thor laughed weakly, the hand on his face thumbing away blood or tears or both. "There is a great deal more, if you would but sit still for it."

"I shall not." Loki stopped, considering just how _tired_ he still was, then smiled. "Or, rather, I shall, but you will not persist with your prattling. I am tired, Thor, not helpless; I can still spell you silent if I must." He let himself sag forward again, fatigued in more ways than one, and when his brother did not protest just rested his head against Thor's shoulder. He closed his eye, breathing around the new, painful warmth in his chest, and for several moments could do nothing but try not to laugh or scream or cry.

He could sense that Thor still wanted to say something, but after a moment, simply dropped his hand from his face to his back and said nothing. His brother rubbed slowly, aimless circles, and even if Loki hadn't been too languid and loose to fight it, he suspected that Thor needed it even more than he did.

"You are not just a sinner," he sighed, finally. "And I am certainly no saint. I have wronged you, as well, easily just as much as you have wronged me." _And many would certainly say much, much more than that._ "You must know that."

"But that is not what this is about. I am merely- I wish for you to know- that I love you, and am-"

"-sorry, and proud of me, and forgive me, and love me again." Loki rolled his eye, voice catching on a flimsy chuckle in his throat. "Message received and acknowledged, brother. Not quite necessary, but... appreciated." He managed a half-smile, face still hidden in his shoulder, then shifted a little, turning just so so he could hear the beat of his heart, instead. _Alive,_ it said. _We are both alive._

Somehow, that was enough.

He was alive, and for the first time in nearly a decade, he was free. Thanos was gone. Thor was alive. The war was actually over, and against every conceivable odd in the universe, they'd _won_.

He'd honestly never believed this day would come. Never even dared to have the slightest hope that if it did, he would be alive for it. But now here it was, and here they both were. Alive.

It was too overwhelming to ever be believed.

He did not have to run, anymore. There was nothing even to run _from_ or _to,_ and by all apparent accounts this was perhaps the best chance at life he'd ever had. There was no pressing secret to be kept from Thor. There was no axe hanging over his head. He had suddenly every choice, freedom, safety in the world.

Everything was perfectly fine for the first time in a century, in so long that he'd all but forgotten what it even felt like but here it was, inescapable, undeniable, solid as Thor's warmth in his arms, so-

So-

So why was his heart fluttering in his chest like a jarred moth's wings, and why were his breaths suddenly so shallow he couldn't taste them at all, and his hands cold and clammy against Thor's warmth, and-

So why was he so _scared?_

"It's all right, little brother," Thor rumbled over him, the low, steady promise somehow heard underneath the shallow pants. He surely didn't even know what was wrong, not the least of which because Loki didn't know himself, but all he said was, "Breathe. Just breathe." His hand circled his back again, the other re-tangling in his hair. "We're okay. We're okay."

Loki squeezed his own eye shut, fingers grasping in his brother's armor. It was humiliating, it was embarrassing, he didn't understand why, his face burned and his eye was wet, but for a time all he could do was kneel there in his brother's arms and hang on.

"Th- Thor?" he murmured, finally. When his voice could bear the enormous weight of the name and not crack underneath it.

The hand in his hair squeezed, a little, trailing for the back of his head to the side of his neck, and that was enough. Loki kept his eye closed, focusing only on the safety of the warmth surrounding him, the heartbeat in his ear, the security of Thor's heavy limbs and protection that they promised. An anchor in the same chaos that had surrounded him all the years of his life and had drowned him for the last ten, was trying to drown him now, and it was only Thor's outstretched hand that kept him above the water.

He felt like he was still falling.

"Don't let go?" he asked, his hands clenching in Thor's cloak.

Thor's choked sob was answer enough.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's a wrap, folks!!!
> 
> Well, actually, not quite. There's a definite part V, which will actually be a fluffy recovery party with Tony and co (which shall be crashed by Thor and Loki). And then I have a few other assorted, vague ideas for this verse after that, but just the part V, for now. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
